There was a timeâlong before personalized walk-up music and mid-inning TikTok challengesâwhen a relieverâs entrance meant something. It meant pageantry, flair, and most importantly⊠a tiny car shaped like a baseball helmet.
Yes, the bullpen cart. Not just a vehicleâa chariot of absurd majesty.
These odd little machines were part golf cart, part parade float, and all ridiculous. Often painted in team colors and topped with a giant batting helmet or baseball, they looked like something out of a Little League fever dream. And when they puttered out onto the fieldâdoing a crisp 8 miles per hourâit was as if Zeus himself had summoned a mop-up man from the clouds.
The reliever would sit stone-faced in the passenger seat, trying not to look like a guy getting chauffeured to his colonoscopy, while fans in the stands lost their minds. Because thereâs nothing quite like watching a full-grown man with a 4.87 ERA roll onto the field inside what looks like a ride from a Chuck E. Cheese parking lot.
They werenât practical. They werenât fast. But they were magic.
Some featured actual baseball glove-shaped seats. Others had sirens, horns, or lights that served absolutely no purpose. And yet, we cheered. We always cheered. Because bullpen cars werenât about efficiency. They were about the show. About adding one more layer of weird to a sport already overflowing with superstition and sunflower seeds.
Eventually, teams ditched them in favor of a good olâ fashioned jog from the outfield. Boring. Functional. Lame.
Bring back the helmet cars. Bring back the glory. Because if a manâs about to give up back-to-back doubles, the least we can do is let him arrive in style.
